


Bite Your Tongue

by Psilent (HereThereBeFic)



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Coming Out, Family, Friendship, Gen, Trans Character, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-06
Updated: 2014-01-06
Packaged: 2018-01-07 15:58:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1121778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HereThereBeFic/pseuds/Psilent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s sixteen before he finally gets it. Sixteen and taking every medical course he can get his hands on as a high school sophomore, which isn’t much. He spends a lot of time at the hospital, following his dad around when he can and sitting quietly in the waiting areas when he can’t, reading schoolwork and extra material he’s found for himself, balancing a PADD and a few paper books on his legs. Sixteen and he comes across the term <em>gender dysphoria</em> and he stares and stares and stares at the same paragraph until his father finds him and says it’s time to go home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bite Your Tongue

**Author's Note:**

> Potentially triggering/upsetting content: Narrative referring to a trans character using old names and pronouns before the character realized he was trans. Some medical stuff but nothing explicit, really just talk. Emetophobia (content mention). Terminal illness and assisted suicide. Menstruation-related cissexism from one character. Dysphoria specific to dfab trans people hitting puberty. Talk of hormone injections.
> 
> ETA: This author **does not** believe that dysphoria is required to be trans, and regrets that this story may come across as contradicting that.

She’s four years old and her mother reads the newspaper to her every evening.

Eleanora McCoy has a standing order from a novelty service that selects the day’s biggest stories and has them printed on replica old-fashioned newsprint. It can’t go out as fast as electronic sources, but it usually arrives sometime in the afternoon. It’s beyond outmoded and she knows it, but it’s a family tradition. Some of her fondest childhood memories are of sitting with her grandmother in a big armchair and learning to read the comics (and newspapers were archaic in her grandmother’s time, and her grandmother knew it).

So every evening, when Josephine and Donna have eaten dinner and are starting to get sleepy enough to sit still, Eleanora pulls them up to sit beside her on the couch, and reads aloud every story fit for the ears of a toddler.

When David is working the night shift, it’s a good distraction to keep them from missing him – and in the morning, when Eleanora’s gone to deal with other people’s mistakes and complaints and _slight_ _chemical_ _mishaps_ at the local water treatment plant for seven delightful hours, Josephine babbles happily at David about what they read in the paper the night before while Donna pokes sleepily at her breakfast plate and lets her sister do the talking.

Some nights, long after Donna has stumbled upstairs to her room, Josephine outright refuses to be put to bed until David is home to tell her goodnight. And some nights, Eleanora is too tired to make her. And on those nights, they finish the newspaper, and they talk. 

It’s mostly inconsequential chitchat that she’d be fonder of if it happened earlier in the day. Preschool ended a month ago, and Josephine doesn’t go on many playdates. (“I thought you liked Maurice, sweetie? And Jenny, and Korrig, and the Fentallik twins? Don’t you want to play with them?” “ _No_! They’re DUMB.” “Josephine Helen McCoy, you bite your tongue!”) And she likes her babysitter just fine, which means she never talks about her.

During one of those nights, Josephine curls tight and small into her mother’s side, and Eleanora is almost starting to hope she’s falling asleep. And then,

“Mama? What would my name've been, if… if I was a boy?”

And she doesn’t think anything of it. She asked the question herself when she was young. (Dylan. Not _awful_ , as far as these things go.) So she smiles down at her daughter and says, “Leonard.”

“How come?” the child presses, and Eleanora knows that means _Who for?_ Eleanora was named for her mother’s best friend, and David for a long-dead, long-missed cousin on his younger mother’s side. Donna loves to tell her friends the only somewhat embellished story of how she was named after her great-great-great aunt, a rogue explorer in the early days of interstellar travel.

 _Josephine_ comes from a family friend Eleanora can hardly remember from her own childhood, but whose name always struck her as a good one.

“No special reason,” she says, playing with her daughter’s hair. Josephine’s breathing is beginning to slow. “We just both liked it. Are you ready to go to bed yet?”

Instantly, the little girl scrambles to sit up, eyes owlish and mouth set in a stubborn frown. “Nuh-uh!”

-

She doesn’t start to really figure it out until puberty hits. Her classmates giggle and talk about bra sizes and – _other things_ and she slides as far down in her seat as she can and wishes she could just sink right into the floor. This is _awful_. How do people get excited about this? Everything hurts. Clothes are harder to wear and she never wants to have babies anyway so why does she need the ability to have one or feed one?

"It sucks," Donna agrees, and hands her some chocolate, and she wants to scream _you don't understand you DON'T UNDERSTAND_ but she takes the chocolate and thanks her sister instead.

“You’re becoming a woman, Jo,” her mother tells her, like it’s some sort of prize for putting up with it all.

“Well, I _hate_ it,” she grumps, and hides in her room the rest of the night trying to fall asleep so she won’t have to think.

Becoming a woman. The other girls in school are ecstatic.

Her stomach hurts more than she thinks it should.

-

He’s sixteen before he finally gets it. Sixteen and taking every medical course he can get his hands on as a high school sophomore, which isn’t much. He spends a lot of time at the hospital, following his dad around when he can and sitting quietly in the waiting areas when he can’t, reading schoolwork and extra material he’s found for himself, balancing a PADD and a few paper books on his legs. 

Sixteen and he comes across the term _gender dysphoria_ and he stares and stares and stares at the same paragraph until his father finds him and says it’s time to go home.

- 

Seventeen and he tells his family. Seventeen and his sister hugs him and his mother looks horrified, and for a moment he wants to run away, but then she says “How did we not _notice_? We could have _helped_. I’m so sorry, J- I…”

And his father just sits quietly and looks him up and down and finally nods and asks him if he has a name in mind.

“Leonard,” he says, thinking of all the times it’s crossed his mind since he was small. All the times he’s gazed out a window on the school shuttle or in the kitchen and seen another him, another body, _Leonard_ , doing all the things he wanted to do when he was older. All the times he’s snapped out of it and dismissed it as silly daydreaming.

His mother sucks in a breath. “Are you sure? You don’t have to, just because-”

“I don’t hate the name Josephine,” he says quietly. “And I like having a name you both picked out for me. I’m used to Leonard. It fits.”

And she smiles and kisses his forehead and says “It does. It really does.”

- 

His first experience with binding is terrific and awful and makes him dizzy for none of the reasons he’s been warned it might. He spends the whole day sure that someone, a nosy classmate, an overinvested teacher, is going to demand an explanation. Of course, no one notices. And of course, this doesn’t help. By the time he gets home he’s so keyed up and ready to defend himself, all he can do is throw himself down on his bed and scream into a pillow until he starts laughing.

-

His father gives him a haircut.

They don’t talk. But when it’s done, David leads him from the kitchen to the bathroom so he can look in the mirror, and Leonard stops and gapes and can’t make a sound.

“Just like your old man,” David offers after an awkward few seconds.

And it’s not. It’s really not. But the potential is there. Leonard wants to cry. He hugs his father instead.

-

He can’t change schools.

It’s a good one, and he likes the classes and the teachers and it will look good on transcripts when he’s trying for colleges.

He starts his junior year halfway through his first round of testosterone injections. Three rounds and you’re good, you’re set, there’s no going back without spending a lot of money and a lot of time. That’s fine with him. Three sets of four months of sticking a hypo in his own shoulder and he won't hate his body. 

But he’s starting school with short hair and a binder and a new name and new levels of testosterone coursing through him and on the second day a boy he used to be friends with snickers that now he’ll have a better shot at medical school, at least, because girls aren’t meant to be doctors, and before he really knows it he’s across the room with his hands in the other boy’s shirt collar and he’s _screaming_.

“What the FUCK do you know about _girls_ , huh? You wanna tell that to my _grandmothers,_ the pediatric surgeon and the oncologist? My _aunt_ , the x-ray tech? My _cousins_ , the RN, the orthopedist, and the _dadgum_ _EMT_? My _mama_ spends her time makin’ sure people like _you_ don’t get _poisoned_.” 

He’s sent to the principal’s office for the first time since elementary school. His parents scold him for his language and they all go out to dinner.

- 

It’s his second day of his second year of Academy and someone almost runs him over in the hall. 

As it is, papers and old-fashioned books fly every which way and it takes a few minutes to sort out what belongs to who. The other cadet spends the whole time apologizing and eventually Leonard moves on from grumbling to chuckling, holding out a hand to help him up. “No worries, kid. Neither of us was lookin’ where we oughta’ve been.” He turns the hand up into a handshake. “I’m Leonard McCoy.” 

“Jim Kirk. Still sorry.” The other man draws his hand back sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck. “I don’t… quite know where I’m going.” 

“First year?”

“Yeah.”

“Where you headin’? I’ll walk ya if I know it.”

-

It takes a week for Jim to figure out that Leonard’s not a professor. He’s more embarrassed about it than Leonard is.

“It’s not that I think you look _old_ ,” he insists, talking with his mouth full and still managing to be heard over the noise of the canteen around them. “You just… look old _er_ than most other second-year cadets.”

“Smooth, kid. I’m _six_ years older than you; I ain’t _dead_ yet.” Honestly, Leonard’s more amused than anything else. But Jim doesn’t need to know that. “I guess you could say I’m lookin’ for a fresh start. I made some headway into one life and didn’t like where it was going. So here I am jumpin’ into a new one. Nothing can go wrong.”

Jim nods, and the look on his face is one that’s somewhere approaching a smile but not quite there yet. Like he’s not sure if he’s allowed or if Leonard’s actually pissed at him. “Makes sense. You studying anything in particular?”

“Medicine,” Leonard says, and he shook the pride out of the word years ago but Jim still sits up straighter. “Had my own practice, back in Georgia. Regular sawbones. Last year was mostly proving I still knew the basics. I guess that’s what most of this’ll be, outside of xenobiology classes. Not many non-humans lookin’ for human doctors in Atlanta.” 

Jim grins and takes another bite of his sandwich. “Learn anything interesting?”

Remembering yesterday’s lecture on intestinal structures in superficially piscine mammalian species, Leonard grimaces, and pushes his own food away(and it's entirely for show, because he is a _doctor_ ).

“More than I ever wanted to know.”

-

It’s silly, really, the way he tenses at first when Jim starts calling him _Bones_. Jim doesn’t know how hard he fought for his name. Jim doesn’t know he still gets messages from old teachers and classmates and family friends that he doesn’t open because they’re not addressed to _him_. 

And the third or fourth time it happens, Jim notices the wince he can’t hide, and his brow furrows and he says “I can stop calling you that if you want.” 

And just like that Leonard can shake his head, and tell him it’s fine, and mean it.

-

Leonard’s first run through the shuttle crash simulator is exactly as awful as he expected it to be. He wakes up in his own bed six hours later and feels hungover and wishes he’d thought to get drunk.

His PADD is lying beside his pillow, lighting up with a notification of a new message. He squints down at it and can blearily make out a conversation he absolutely does not remember starting.

**_SENT TO: J.T.K._ **

_klill nme jim pelsea keillk me i can tell yuo hwo to makeit piaenlss_

**_RECEIVED FROM: J.T.K._ **

_say again??_

**_SENT TO: J.T.K._ **

_im gogin to thrwo up everythgin ive ever eatahen in my lfie and then im gogin to throw up thigns ive never heard of_

**_RECEIVED FROM: J.T.K._ **

_oh right you had that shuttle sim today. so how'd it go_

**_SENT TO: J.T.K._ **

_fuck youu yroue a howrrible friedn and i hpeop veyrtyt material obcjettct you hodl daer in tihs wordl catches on ffire_

**_RECEIVED FROM: J.T.K._ **

_that bad huh_

**_RECEIVED FROM: J.T.K._ **

_Bones_

**_RECEIVED FROM: J.T.K._ **

_Bones hey_

**_RECEIVED FROM: J.T.K._ **

_Bones are you sleeping or dead_

For a few minutes, all he can do is stare down in horror. Then, gingerly, he checks his main messages screen to make sure he didn't try to talk to anyone _else_.

He did not. Thank God for small mercies. 

**_SENT TO: J.T.K._ **

_I'm not dead. I have no recollection of this conversation. And neither do you._

**_RECEIVED FROM: J.T.K._ **

_sure thing Bones_

**_SENT TO: J.T.K._ **

_I disabled spellcheck and autocorrect on my PADD because it doesn't recognize a few medical terms that come up a lot._

**_RECEIVED FROM: J.T.K._ **

_Sensible._

**_SENT TO: J.T.K._ **

_I hate everything in the world and I'm going back to sleep._

**_RECEIVED FROM: J.T.K._ **

_it's the middle of the afternoon_

**_SENT TO: J.T.K._ **

_And it's Saturday. I have no classes. Goodnight._

_-_

Jim's just finished his first one-year assignment as an ensign and he can't shut up about it. As a survival tactic, Leonard chooses to find this endearing. They meet at the docking bay and go straight out for lunch to catch up, and he lets Jim do most of the talking and doesn't let himself think about how many still, broken bodies he's seen in that red uniform shirt.

By the time they get back to campus the temporal discrepancy ("Fancy name for _jetlag_ , you mean?" "It is... _so much worse_ than jetlag.") is starting to take its toll, and Leonard graciously allows Jim to pass out on his couch.

He's just signing off from a call with Joanna when Jim wakes up.

"Well, look who decided to rejoin the land of the living," he drawls, chuckling. 

Jim stretches, yawns, and asks "Who was that? On the holo?"

"My daughter." 

"Joanna?"

"Yep."

"She's got red hair." 

"Yep." 

"Does Jocelyn have red h-"

"Nope. We adopted."

"Oh. Okay."

Jim blinks around the room like he doesn't trust it, says "The engine's dead," and falls back asleep. Leonard rolls his eyes and throws a blanket over him.

-

They've known each other for three years and the subject has never come up.

It's a ridiculous thing to be worried about.

Leonard _worries_ _about_ _it_.

-

They don't see too much of each other in person anymore. Leonard's busy at HQ, patching people up and more often than not scolding them for whatever they did to warrant his attention, and Jim's busy apparently trying to get himself killed out in space.

They do vid calls, when they can. Keep each other up to date. And if Jim happens to be in San Francisco for a while and Leonard doesn't have anything scheduled he couldn't easily assign to a cadet, they meet up for lunch and drinks and sound criticisms of each other's life choices.

This time they've ended up back in Leonard's rooms, buzzed but not unpleasantly so. Leonard fills two glasses of water and says "Hey, uh, Jim..." and then doesn't say anything else.

Jim takes one of the glasses, nearly spills it settling onto the couch, and raises his eyebrows. "Yeah?"

"What?"

"You were saying something."

"...Was I?" 

Jim snorts. "You're not _that_ drunk, Bones."

He's not.

"I got somethin' I - well, don't _need_ to tell ya, I guess, but. Feels weird _not_ tellin' ya. Y'know?"

"Sure."

"I... I aint-" And he stops, and bites his tongue, because _damn it_ , after all these years his first instinct in this is still to frame it as something he _isn't_. "...'m trans," he finally mumbles, into his glass.

"What?"

Sighing, he straightens up and looks the other way and says clearly, "I'm _trans_ , Jim."

"...Okay."

"Okay?" 

"Okay."

"...Good." He takes another drink. His heart is pounding. Jim frowns, sitting up straighter.

"Did you... Did you think it wouldn't be?"

Swirling the glass absently, Leonard shrugs. "Nn. Dunno. Just kinda awkward to bring up, I guess." 

"I guess. I mean – ! No, it's - it's fine! That you did."

"...Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Okay."

They sip their water quietly. Leonard waits for the awkward questions he's answered and deflected a hundred times over.

_"Is that why Jocelyn-"_

_"Does Joanna know?"_

_"Do you have-"_

_"So how do you-"_

_"Is that why you're single?"_

_"What was your name?"_

The questions don't come. Jim drinks his water and fiddles with the hem of the gold shirt he still hasn't changed out of and doesn't say a word.

Leonard smiles down into his glass and looks up and says "So tell me more about the horrors of space travel." 

" _Wonders_ , Bones, _wonders_."

"Speak for your own damn self."

-

Nothing is real. Nothing is allowed to be real. His brain is locked down tight and it isn't going to process any of this until he's safely away from his mother and his sister and anyone else he can hurt by being anything less than absolutely sure he's done the right thing.

David McCoy is dead. Eleanora is too tired to cry for him. Leonard can still feel the button under his thumb and he can still see the sympathetic gaze of the doctor across the bed and he still wants to punch him and he still knows that's entirely misdirected and uncalled for.

He and Donna have had the fights and the crying jags and the hysterical apologies over the fact that Donna is the eldest but Leonard is the doctor and David McCoy has always been practical and it's Leonard's name on the next of kin form. Donna is guilty and Leonard is resentful and guilty for that but facts are facts and they have things to get on with.

They sit on the couch with their mother and she reads the paper out loud. Every line.

David doesn't come home to say goodnight. Leonard holds his mother as she falls apart and then falls asleep, and he tips his head back and stares at the ceiling until morning. At some point Donna tells him "I guess I would have done the same thing, Len," and goes up to bed and it takes him a few hours to realize she said it and to wonder if it means they're done fighting.

Two days later he lets the water in the bathroom sink run for five minutes while his own wide eyes gawk back at him from the mirror and his father's voice insists _just like your old man._


End file.
